Scale Your Business With Data with Crawford McMillan
Scale Your Business With Data with Crawford McMillan
Podcast Description
The Scale Your Business with Data podcast is the no-fluff guide for leaders who know there’s money buried in their data but need a proven map to dig it up—fast.
Hosted by Graham Crawford (co-founder of Crawford MacMillan and longtime “data whisperer” for high-growth teams), each weekly episode distills decades of front-line experience into conversations you can act on immediately. Forget buzzwords and theoretical frameworks; this show zeroes in on the real-world moves that turn:
- Chaotic spreadsheets into clear signals, so you see which levers actually drive revenue, margin, and customer loyalty.
-Everyday metrics into decision intelligence, so you stop debating dashboards and start reallocating budgets, products, and people with confidence.
-Expensive AI hype into practical advantage, learn how to define and govern data first, then layer automation without sacrificing explainability or control.
-“Hope” strategies into repeatable playbooks—so multi-million-dollar calls happen in minutes, not months.
Whether you’re scaling a startup, steering a Fortune-500 unit, or simply tired of dashboards that look good but do nothing, you’ll walk away each week with:
-Actionable insights you can deploy before the next meeting.
-Battle-tested stories that de-risk your own transformation.
-A clearer mental model for leading people, processes, and technology around data—not the other way around.
-No jargon, no ivory-tower theory—just candid talk, unexpected analogies, and an unwavering focus on value creation.
Subscribe today and join a community that turns hidden numbers into breakout growth.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast explores a range of topics focused on data strategy, decision intelligence, and AI implementation. Episodes cover practical aspects such as transforming chaotic spreadsheets into clear signals for revenue growth, optimizing corporate KPIs, and utilizing data for effective decision-making. For instance, one episode features Nick White discussing how data strategy can bridge the gap between data collection and actionable insights, enhancing business performance.
Private equity meets data. Conversations with deal teams, operating partners, and portfolio company leaders about the data problems that kill deals, slow exits, and destroy value.
Hosted by Graeme Crawford, founder of Crawford McMillan. 20 years leading data programs at Fortune 100 companies. Now helping PE-backed companies fix data before exits so the numbers hold up under scrutiny.
New episodes cover diligence red flags, value creation playbooks, and the real stories behind successful (and failed) transactions.
Philip Curran has spent four decades inside the rooms where leadership either holds together or quietly falls apart. In this episode, we get into the half of the story that most data people never see: the hidden emotional contract between leaders and the people they lead, and why ignoring it costs PE portfolio companies real money before and during exit.
We cover the eight promises leaders make every day whether they know it or not, how leadership misalignment shows up as data problems, and why the hero culture inside PE-backed companies is more of a liability than an asset. If you care about what actually drives returns, this one connects dots you have probably felt but never named.
—
Chapters:
- 00:03 – The Role of Leaders in Shaping Culture
- 11:41 – Understanding the Hidden Emotional Contract
- 16:33 – Understanding Leadership and Decision Making
- 29:40 – Understanding Leadership through Hidden Emotional Contracts
- 43:06 – The Hidden Emotional Contract in Work
**Guest Information**
Phillip Curran is the founder of Renova, a senior human capital advisory firm providing interim CHRO leadership and strategic counsel to CEOs and private equity operators. He is the creator of the ARC Diagnostic, a tool that measures leadership reliability at the enterprise level. His first book, The Hidden Emotional Contract, publishes August 17th.
– Company: Rinnova HR
– LinkedIn: Phillip Curran
—
**Companies Mentioned**
– Renova
– IBM
– Capital One
—
**Websites Mentioned**
– Rinnova HR
– Phillip Curran on LinkedIn
—
**Key Takeaways**
– Culture is the lived experience of the people working for you, driven by the exhibited behaviors of leaders. HR cannot create it.
– When five executives hold five different definitions of an active customer, the cost is not just a reporting issue. It slows decisions, breaks operations, and shows up as eroded exit value.
– The eight promises: dignity, clarity, safety, meaning, growth, recognition, belonging, and agency. Breaking any of them causes people to pull back long before the numbers reflect it.
– Decision velocity always matters in private equity. Anything that puts a foot on the brake, whether role confusion or lack of strategic clarity, destroys value.
– The hero culture PE environments breed is a single point of failure, not a feature.
Disclaimer
This podcast’s information is provided for general reference and was obtained from publicly accessible sources. The Podcast Collaborative neither produces nor verifies the content, accuracy, or suitability of this podcast. Views and opinions belong solely to the podcast creators and guests.
For a complete disclaimer, please see our Full Disclaimer on the archive page. The Podcast Collaborative bears no responsibility for the podcast’s themes, language, or overall content. Listener discretion is advised. Read our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy for more details.